If there was ever a "technology" I was afraid of, it has been the car. For many years, I would get highly anxious whenever I was sitting on the passenger seat in a car, and the driver herself left me in the car with the engine running, while she went for a quick errand. I was convinced that if I as much as looked at the steering wheel while left alone with it, the car would run away with me and crash. It took me several months of driving lessons to get rid of the nervous beating of my heart whenever I took my place in the driver's seat, and even longer to believe that I actually had control with the car, not the opposite. I've been thinking that this is perhaps the way, some other women still feel about computers (at least I've met a few): that it is an "uncontrollable technology" with a mind of its own. This kind of fear is completely irrational, and much stronger for that reason, but you can't really help it, until someone teaches you to take "control" of the technology and to understand how it works. A valuable lesson - to suddenly much better understand people with tech fobias.

But now I've overcome mine (mostly) and today I passed my driving test - in the first go! Am I a happy camper!!! (and no, I wont tell you how many driving lesson's it took to get there, but the lessons = age equation is not completely wrong ;)).
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:13 (3) comments

Tomorrow, as main supervisior, I'm responsible of conducting 5 oral MA-thesis exams, all in one go.

The exams involve 2 different external examiners, 2 different co-supervisors, 10 students, whereof 1 is from another study programme with different exam requirements and expectations - and not the least, the reading of all together more than 700 pages of writing. I have NEVER in my previous almost 7 years at ITU had so much administrative overhead involved in the planning of exams. One thing is that at ITU, supervisors themselves have to find examiners, exam dates, co-ordinate with the co-supervisors etc with no help from the study administration, another thing has been the additional interesting challenges added this time, like the fact that people didnt respond to their emails, or had moved to a new job, and then suddenly one of the external examiners weren't in the approved board of examiners anymore, and that then, when I got him approved, he hadnt been approved by the head of the other study programme etc etc. I have made SO many phone calls to get things set right.

I really like supervising, especially MA-thesis students, but with all the admin overhead that goes into getting them through the formal system, I am honestly quite relieved that I dont have to bother with any more exams for the next year or so!!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:04 (0) comments

Next March, there is an interesting conference on (Game) World Building: Space and Community at the University of Florida in Gainesville (where one of my many cousins happens to live, as it goes...:)). So far, nice line up of keynote speakers: Scott Jennings, Dave Szulborski and Nick Montfort. Deadline for 500 word abstracts, January 1st.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 08:48 (0) comments

Her er slides fra min forelæsning igår (pdf, på dansk). Ups, redigeret version følger senere, så man også kan se hvad der står på alle slides.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 08:54 (0) comments

(links for a talk tomorrow)

MobileActive.org - website gathering links & news about the use of mobiles for various forms of civic engagement

Mobile Media in the 21st Century White Paper (from US New Politics Institute)

Article on U2's use of audiences' mobile phones in the ONE campaign (Crawford, Celine. “Text For Change - Bono Calls on Europeans
Africa Using the Power of SMS” & the ONE Campaign Website.

From Mobile Phone to Mobile Swarm.”(blog entry, August 24th, 2006)

Smart Mobs Blog

Mobile Democracy Blog

Personal Democracy Forum
# posted by Lisbeth at: 22:27 (0) comments

A UK company, Carphone Warehouse has published the results of a big survey on mobile life in the UK on their project webpage: Mobile Life Study.

Some interesting findings:
- to people aged 18-24 years, the mobile phone matters more to them than television
- half of mothers and one third of fathers ask their children how to use certain functions on their own mobiles
- in UK, more than 90% of the 12-year olds have a mobile.

Also material on mobile tribes, the use of mobiles at home, in social situations etc.

Aside from the survey itself, it is interesting to see how this company seem to brand itself by sharing more information than is the norm for free and by hosting a dedicated website on the matter; to see that a company think it has more value to share results from the entire survey rather than charging exessive amounts of money for it, which is still the rule rather than the exception.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 09:36 (0) comments

Back in Copenhagen - here are some misc links that I have picked up from mail and the conference meanwhile:

A Scandinavian alternative to YouTube (in Scandinavian languages) has spread to both Sweden, Norway and now Denmark: Bubblare.dk .

On the website of crime author and forensic anthropologist (how cool a job title is that?) Kathy Reichs (one of whose books I read on my way home from Sweden), there is a small "forensic" detective game, where you can try to solve a mysterious death, using various lab analysis as part of your search.

However, the puzzles of this game is nothing compared to the Notpron puzzle, that Ulf Hagen - who solved the entire puzzle himself - talked about at the Virtual 2006 conference. 139 levels of pure puzzle fun. Ulf also gave us a link to the wikipedia page on Online Puzzles, where you can find a list of online puzzles. I've been thinking a bit about what makes online puzzles as a genre different from on the one hand, ARG games (Alternative Reality Games) and Flash games like Samorost. What defines online puzzles seem to be that you a) know that they take place in a purely fictional and constructed world (no doubt whether the page or screen you are visiting are real or not), and that you have to jump from webpage to webpage (screen to screen) to solve the puzzle, compared to the Flash Game, that often takes place on the same website or in the same universe. Am I right? Borders seem to liquid though.

Must read: Martin Jay's Songs of Experience (mentioned in McCarthy's Keynote)

Shup Up & Dance Machinima movie (WoW) - Game On (Volvo Competition) machinima (nice mix of RL and GTA) - Anna Machinima (flower story) (from Jon Manker's list of favourite Machinima)

B. Flynn: Geography of the Digital Hearth (from Daniel Pargman's and Peter's presentation)

Theyrule.net (visualisation of relations and doubles in the Fortune 500 companies - mentioned in Mary Flanagan's talk)
# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:05 (0) comments

Silence for a little while, it's because I have been busy preparing my talk and job as moderator of the Interactive Experience track at the Virtual 2006 conference, from which I'm currently posting (no free wireless internet connection, so using a hotel pc). The conference started yesterday and continues until tomorrow. We are a nice group of approx 50 people, isolated on a very beautiful little island Rosenön (Rose Island), just off the Swedish coast, south-east of Stockholm. I think it is the most beautiful and peaceful conference setting, I've ever experienced! And it comes with a complete spa facility too.

There's photos from the conference, and the students of Södertörn Högskola, the conference organiser is doing a blog about the talks.

Interesting discussions, good mix of people from HCI and user experience design; game researchers, humanists and a few practitioners (like Mary Flanagan).

Surprisingly, the conference has also provided me with the opportunity to organise my first game workshop! Since a keynoter had to cancel, Mary Flanagan and I promised to fill in the empty slot, so we've just sent people off to design a game about getting away from the island, which has to incorporate a particular value and particular form of experience into the design. Will be interesting to see that the conference attendees come up with - more to follow.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:36 (1) comments

Googling for academic articles on presence (presence as in tele-presence, the experience of "being there" in a virtual environment or experiencing the illusion of non-mediation) is hard work, not much literature comes up. Here's the place to go (I think):International Society for Presence Research and the journal Presence. In the last issue of Presence, Ralph Schröder has an interesting looking article "Being There Together and the Future of Connected Presence", which you can find online in an earlier version.

//argh, blogger doesnt want me to post//
# posted by Lisbeth at: 18:17 (2) comments

I can still make it, you can still make it: the deadline for the 300 word abstract for the Mobile Media 2007 conference in Sydney is September 10th. This conference takes place in Sydney in early July, DAC 2007 (Dgital Arts & Culture) takes place in Perth, in earlyish September, so why not make a longer trip to Australia out of it? This is what I intend to do, at least - if my papers are accepted, that is!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:39 (1) comments

Ekstra Bladet, the Danish version of The Sun, has been running a blogsite on the side for some time. Now they have decided to integrate their blogworld (with a graphic identity completely different from Ekstra Bladet itself) more closely with the newspaper, by offering "Læserbladet" ("The Reader's Paper"), a subsite on the newspaper website, presenting the best stories from the blogs.

A first look at the page reveals that the selected blog stories are set up just like the ordinary stories on the paper, with a link to the blog they are taken from, in the bottom. They all appear to be edited by a journalist (?) named "Mave" (UK: stomach), so not completely the readers' stories yet... The choice of stories today seem to mirror the stories that are currently "hot" in the mainstream news; in addition read personal opinons on how to lead a better and less conformist life or on how to drive your car. It definitely will be interesting to see what happens on this page in the near future. Is it really possible to make a Readers' Paper worth reading for bloggers and non-bloggers alike?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:48 (0) comments